16-30 April 2023

About a Girl

'cause even in the dark, I feel your resistance

you can see my heart burning in the distance

I wish I didn’t have to write this. I thought, after all this time and therapy and growth since the
last time someone broke my heart, I might be able to move past this without ever having to confront it
on an emotional level. In doing so, all I really accomplished was losing access to my emotions and
nearly welcoming depression back into my life. I have accepted now that I still have more work to do,
that simply taking action is not a substitute for experiencing the feelings I have postponed. So here I
am.
It hasn’t rained a day since I left the gift and letter on your doorstep. And even though I tried,
in the last month and a half I hadn’t been able to cry over the end of our relationship. Three separate
times, I felt my eyes start to burn and the muscles in my face and throat start to pull, but after a few
seconds it faded and I went back to feeling nothing. Two days ago I started crying uncontrollably while
I was driving home from a birthday party, then yesterday I decided to start writing everything I feel.
This morning, I awoke to rain outside that had been going on through most of the night. Was the sky
waiting for me to cry first? It’s the kind of coincidence that might convince a Romantic, anyway.
The worst thing about how things ended between us is how they really didn’t. I felt you
pulling away, and I tried to give you the way out it seemed you were looking for. I asked you point
blank if you wanted to end things between us, but even then, when I was trying to make it as easy as
possible for you to go, I still couldn’t get an actual answer. The three weeks of silence in January were
agony for me and my anxiety, and I couldn’t understand what was happening. You triggered my
rejection and abandonment wounds, and I had to do a lot of learning and growing about myself in
those few weeks you were at training to see beyond those fears and realize that this had almost
everything to do with you and your issues, not mine.
I thought the space I was giving you while you were at training was helping, and the effort you
were making to keep in contact with me despite the personal challenges you were going through gave
me hope that you were working on yourself, too. But when you returned and once again stonewalled
my attempt to see you in person, it became clear to me that there wasn’t anything more I could do to
convince you to let me in. Do you know how bizarre it is to have to write a pseudo-breakup letter from
the point of view of the other person to break up with yourself while simultaneously explaining how
you’re not writing it because you want to, but because it has become clear that the other person is
unable to provide any sense of closure in the situation? It’s not something I ever expected I’d need to
do, at least. But here we are.
Nothing about you or this situation confuses me anymore. Ironically enough, and what I
know would absolutely mortify you to ever realize, the entire experience has helped me come to
 16-30 April 2023

understand you more than ever. Now I see you completely, despite your best attempts to stop that
from happening. When we first got back together after you tried to break up with me in December,
you told me there was something you wanted to tell me, though you eventually psyched yourself out of
telling me what it was. I suspected then but know with absolute certainty now that you wanted to tell
me you had feelings for me. I know, too, that you still hold these feelings, though you are trying very
hard to deny them. I wish I could say that interpretation is just more of my typical hopeless Romantic
delusion, but I feel no anxious residual “what ifs?” over this conclusion. It is cold, logical, a product of
my analytical half.
All things considered, I think I handled everything with you in a remarkably healthy way. I
know some of my anxious attempts to get closer to you as you pulled away only made things worse, but
I did the best I could with the amount of communication available to me. Most of the people I’ve
talked to about it have all given me some version of the same sentiment: “you did more than I would
have.” They say it as if I did it for some ulterior motive other than the fact that I care about you and I
genuinely wanted to. Most importantly, I am glad I was able to navigate a way through that didn’t
require me to be untrue to my feelings for you or my own desires. As much of a non-ending as it is, I’m
glad that I was able to steer it there on my terms of acceptance and love, and not your terms of
avoidance and fear.
I put on a brave face to deal with the final two months of our relationship. Analysis,
intellectualization– these things come naturally and easily to me. So much so, in fact, that it is easy to
convince myself that I am being emotionally available and vulnerable by verbalizing and describing my
feelings or taking actions based on that detached introspection without ever actually allowing myself to
feel anything. Perhaps my ability to communicate my emotions frequently and in detail may have given
you the impression of someone well-attuned and comfortable with their inner self, but the truth of the
matter is that I’m as terrified of showing people my emotions as you are.
So now what? I did everything I could to make it work with you, and, when it became clear
that we had reached an untenable position in our relationship, I set you free without resentment. I
invested all my time into my project and work and other social events. It should be over, right? My life
has gone on without you. I’ve worked hard to stop myself from thinking and feeling about you.
Everyone tells me it should get easier with time. In reality, every day drags on a little heavier than the
last. I feel myself inching closer and closer to a breakdown. Why am I stuck on this? Do I really have no
alternative but to go against every inclination in my mind and body and allow myself to admit the
feelings I have been trying to shut out? Fine then.
 16-30 April 2023

don't look too far, right where you are, that's where I am

I really miss you. That tiny jolting synapse of an impulse to reach out still fires multiple times a
day, even though I force myself to suppress it. The hardest adjustment for me in all of this has been
going from talking to you everyday to holding back every fiber of desire inside of me and not
contacting you at all. It doesn’t even really feel like you left, only like you went into hiding. Still, it
hurts me that you would want to hide, even though I know you’re mainly hiding from yourself. You’re
on the run from a part of you scared of what you feel for me and overcome with guilt and remorse over
the way you’ve treated me because of these feelings. I see you and I understand you, and I can’t help
but forgive you with the hope that you can eventually forgive yourself.
Despite the heart-wrenching way you’ve treated me since you started to get overwhelmed by
your feelings for me, when I look past my own pain and suffering, I can’t help but feel compassion for
you and what you’re going through. I wish I could stop, that I could find some reason to stop caring
about you. That impulse to escape your feelings is instantly familiar to me because it’s how I tried to
live for almost fifteen years. It’s because of my own experiences that I understand just how much you’re
tearing yourself up on the inside right now. When you told me with tears held back in your eyes that
you hated the way you were and wanted to change, I understood, and all I’ve ever wanted was to help
you get there in any way I could. Even now, when you have made it clear that the only way I can still
help you is to let you go, I still believe that there is hope for you to change, if only because there was
hope for me.
Most of all, I still love you. I know this with absolute certainty, because even after all of the
heartache and my various attempts to get around it or pretend they’re not there, the feelings just won’t
fade or go away. The way you came into my life is the kind of coincidence even a Romantic couldn’t
dream up: one night I’m making up my mind to delete every dating app from my phone as I drift off to
sleep, the next morning there is your match and first message. My expectations were low, and even
though we only shared a limited number of common interests, the more time I spent with you, the
more it became impossible to ignore the things that really matter: that we had very similar ways of
thinking about and experiencing life. You helped bring me down from the ivory tower and gave me the
courage to live life again without fear or shame or reservation. And, as you once confessed to me, the
way I communicated openly inspired you to work on learning how to better accept and express your
feelings. So, even though we both have a lot of fears and insecurities left to overcome, I saw something
worth fighting for with you.
As much as I believe that this issue could be resolved with vulnerability and communication, it
takes two willing participants for that to happen, and I have no reason or intention to chase after
someone who does not want to be found. So I will treat you the way that you are showing me you want
to be treated, even if it hurts me like crazy to have to treat you this way. And I know it isn’t any of my
 16-30 April 2023

business anymore, but I know how you think and why you act the way that you do. You push people
away because you’re afraid of them getting too close, because intimacy is an inherent risk to the
fragility of the person you are on the inside. It’s easier for you to self-sabotage something before it ever
has the chance to disappoint you so you can turn around and say “See? I was right. I can’t trust other
people.” I understand where these thought patterns and fears come from. But what hurts me most of
all is that after all we’ve been through, you could still believe that I would ever be capable of trying to
intentionally hurt you.
Do you think I don’t know what it’s like, how it feels? That warning siren in your mind that
signals danger anytime you get close to showing someone who you truly are and having them
potentially reject and abandon you? The seeming safety of closing yourself off entirely from the world
in order to avoid being hurt by loneliness, only to realize that at the end of the day you’ve only ensured
the exact outcome you were trying to avoid in the first place? And then the futile cycle of attempts to
run from the truth, when no matter how long or far we run, we can never outrun ourselves?
We’re not so different, you and I. All I’ve really done in these past two months is slip back into
my old ways and try to numb all of my feelings over you in the same way that you’ve chosen to do over
me. Even though I knew it was wrong, I tried to rationalize it by saying I needed to keep myself
functional for the sake of the project and the people around me, or that showing people that I wasn’t
over you would make them think I was weak or crazy, or that letting myself feel everything would lead
me down the path to another breakdown. But I have grown and changed a lot since then, and I know
there are other options. The main difference between us is that I am willing to do this self-reflection
and look for another way, even if it isn’t easy. One day, I hope you will realize that there is another way
for you, too, but I cannot wait around for you to see if and when that comes true.
The worst part about all this is that, at the end of the day, I still can’t even feel truly angry or
spiteful over you. My foolish heart still wants to show you compassion and forgiveness and work things
out, even though my mind knows that there is nothing more I can do for you until you start to do
things for yourself again. I would do anything to help you do the work to get where you want to be,
but I can’t do the work for you. And so, I hope you find your way back to where you were when I first
met you– not for me or for us, but for your own well-being. I will always love you and want what is
best for you, even now when that means letting you go and going on without you. One way or
another, I hope it leads us both to true happiness.
What good are these confessions, in the end? What good is it to have all of these leftover
feelings for a person who has forcibly removed themselves from your life? I can hear the familiar
whisper of a voice as it attempts to criticize me for continuing to have these thoughts and make its way
back into my consciousness. I wish it was as easy as saying that it was over and being able to let you go
or trying to erase you from my memory or just hating you. But that’s not the kind of person I am
anymore, and that would just be another attempt to take the easy way out.